The National Careers Service (NCS) figures in many of the hopes for improved information, advice and guidance (IAG). However, its source of funding recently underwent a key change, as Freddie Whittaker reports.
Department for Education (DfE) responsibility for NCS funding was shifted to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) just months before the service plays a bigger role in schools.
The NCS currently provides phone and web services to anyone aged 13 and over. Only those aged 19-plus can access its face-to-face service. But new statutory guidance for schools, issued in April, says the NCS will “expand its offer to schools and colleges” from next month.
However, while the DfE dished out £4.7m last year to the NCS — it gave nothing this year. The DfE said it previously paid for the helpline and webchat service for young people and “this formed in effect a ring-fenced budget within the NCS”. Shifting the budget to BIS, it said, “provides some flexibility in the way NCS is able to develop online and telephone advice for young people”.
However, with BIS picking up a £94m bill for the NCS this year, up £10m on last year, a DfE spokesperson was unable to identify any of its funds that had been transferred to BIS along with the added responsibility. And a spokesperson for BIS was also unable to confirm if it had received any additional funding — from DfE or elsewhere — to cover any of its extra £10m for NCS. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) pays £14m and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) £1.5m of the NCS £109m budget for 2014/15. Last year’s budget of £106m was made up of £84.4m from BIS, £14m from MoJ, £1.5m from DWP, and DfE’s contribution.
The funding of NCS has previously proved a bone of contention with National Careers Council (NCC) members Professor Tony Watts and Heather Jackson resigning from the body last year. They walked out in a row over the way an NCC report covered NCS funding, arguing it “ducked the issue” of BIS paying for youngsters’ careers guidance, allowing DfE to “escape its responsibilities”.
Funding for the NCS was also one of the main points in the Association of Colleges’ (AoC) Careers Guidance: Guaranteed campaign with chief executive Martin Doel, writing in FE Week last year: “Let’s be frank about this, the DfE contribution to the NCS has been extremely disappointing.” And in light of the funding shift, Joy Mercer, AoC education policy director, said: “We feel the DfE should contribute equally [with BIS] both in terms of money and engagement.”
Former Skills Minister Matthew Hancock was also grilled about the issue last year by the education select committee, including chair Graham Stuart. At the time, Mr Stuart said: “Will the minister reassure us that the DfE is committed tosupporting the work of the NCS properly? Will the DfE realise the opportunity that the NCS provides to ensure that we have an all-ages, competent, re-professionalised careers service?”
FE Week contacted Mr Stuart’s office, but was told he had no comment on the latest development.
The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) has broken through the milestone of £20m in sector contracts.
It gave out a total of £23,364,323 to 77 different organisations, from charities and unions to universities and private training providers, since its official launch around August last year and the beginning of last month.
The three biggest-earning contractors, Tribal Education Ltd, the Association of Colleges (AoC) and the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), were awarded contracts worth almost £9m between them for various services.
The biggest single contract, with Tribal, was £2,930,000 for the maths teacher recruitment incentive scheme.
David Russell, ETF chief executive, told FE Week: “All of our contracts are designed to generate high value outputs and impact. Quite rightly we are held up to account on this by our sector owners, our board, expert panels and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) — as our funding body.
“An English enhancement programme is about to start which will enable 1,400 teachers to teach at GCSE level. This will impact thousands more learners. This stands out as it provides practical support to a sector under pressure to respond to the new GCSE requirements. Regional leads across the country will put organisations in touch with the support available to them.
“Also topical this month is the contract we issued for workforce data collection which has resulted in the most comprehensive set of characteristics we have ever had about the FE workforce.”
Last November, the ETF, which is owned by the AoC, AELP and the Association of Adult Education and Training Organisations (also referred to as Holex), said it was handing back £7m of its £18m budget to BIS due to an underspend.
Nevertheless, the ETF got an £18m budget for 2014-15 and is set to get a reduced figure of £10m next year.
The House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee report on adult literacy and numeracy paints a troubling picture of a society in which those who have been failed by the education system continue to miss out on opportunities to learn.
The report is critical of the current government’s approach and of its predecessors’ failure to develop a coherent strategy for adult literacy and numeracy. It calls for a national campaign to boost adult literacy and numeracy and urges government to develop a more coherent, cross-departmental approach to dealing with the UK’s dreadfully poor performance in literacy and numeracy, with better screening, and support for more flexible provision.
The report mentions the ‘inevitable impact’ of low adult skills on economic performance. This is true and important, but the impact goes deeper.
Poor skills don’t just affect people’s ability to do a job well. They hold you back at every stage and in every area of life, with consequences for your health, political participation, relationships with others and, of course, your children’s life chances.
Many of those who leave compulsory education without the basic skills necessary to function in society are reluctant to re-engage with education. And those who do often struggle to find the right kind of opportunity. For many this will not be in a traditional classroom.
Some of the government’s interventions are making a bad situation worse
The report makes sensible suggestions for dealing with these problems. There is recognition of the need for flexibility, in terms of types of programme and provider, and a call for the reversal of the recent funding reduction to unionlearn, imposed in spite of its success in engaging exactly this type of learner.
The committee also calls for more investment and promotion of family learning schemes and a move away from the ‘traditional, linear approach to achieving qualifications’, typified by the government’s obsession with the GCSE ‘gold standard’.
Some of the government’s interventions are making a bad situation worse. The cut to funding for unionlearn is an example of the short-termism of many of the policies implemented under the banner of austerity. The 35 per cent drop in the adult skills budget over the past five years is closing rather than opening up opportunities for adults to learn and making it more difficult for providers to target the hardest to reach.
The community learning budget, though maintained in cash terms, has also been reduced in real terms. At the same time, reductions in voluntary sector support make it harder to replicate on the ground the kind of cooperation the committee would like to see between government departments.
We have struggled with this issue for decades. Despite that, it is still not the case that every child leaves compulsory education with the resources they need for a decent life. Those who fared the worst in compulsory education continue to be those least likely to take up educational opportunity as adults. Many of those who are most in need of support are bearing the brunt of austerity politics, working longer hours for less pay as they struggle to provide for their families. When your day-to-day life is all about survival it is hard to get your head up and think about the future (even if, by some chance, you have heard that the government guarantees to fund adult students up to level two in maths and English).
Cuts in FE funding have made the situation worse with providers given little incentive to invest time and resources in engaging the hardest-to-reach adults rather than focusing on those more likely to complete their courses and progress. As the report notes, funding continues to be ‘driven by the need for qualifications’. Some of the committee’s recommendations, if implemented, will help — and it is difficult to argue against the need for a national campaign or for greater cross-departmental cooperation.
But it is hard to escape the feeling that some more fundamental change — involving the way we do politics and how we address wider social and economic inequalities — will be necessary too.
After a school in Cheshire announced it would be closing its sixth form over plummeting learner numbers, local colleges said they would be able to step in to take on the abandoned learners. David Igoe explains why the situation may be more than a one-off.
The story, late last month, of Culcheth High School in Warrington deciding to close its sixth form may be just the tip of the iceberg, as schools increasingly face up to the high cost of delivering sixth form education when numbers are declining.
With the average size of a school and academy sixth form hovering around 220 there will be many, like Culcheth, with numbers below 100.
It is hard to imagine how such schools maintain a reasonable curriculum and provide the tutorial support and enrichment that makes the sixth form experience an effective preparation for the world of work, or for further and higher education.
We could be facing an avalanche of displaced students, as schools and academies do the sums and realise that the amount of funding available for the sixth form is woefully inadequate.
Many choose to subsidise their small sixth forms by effectively ‘raiding’ the more generous funding available for their 11 to 16-year-old pupils, but there are obvious questions about whether this is either fair to pupils for whom the money is intended, or right to use it to maintain a sixth form when other parts of the service are being strapped for cash.
As the recent report from London Economics exposes, schools and academies can subsidise their sixth forms with up to £2,202 per student and this serves to mask the inadequacy of the 16 to 19 funding pot.
It will be mainly sixth form colleges, general FE and tertiary colleges who will be expected to mop up abandoned sixth formers
The truth is that, as the high levels of transitional and formula protection reach the end of their life in 2015, the reality of the 16 to 18 funding ‘level playing field’ will dissuade more and more schools and academies from offering a sixth form.
The irony is that successive administrations have promoted sixth forms as a major driver for school improvement and have encouraged all schools to have a sixth form no matter whether there is existing good local provision. Indeed, 138 new sixth forms have opened since 2011.
As all this unravels, it will be mainly sixth form colleges, general FE and tertiary colleges who will be expected to mop up abandoned sixth formers.
Fortunately, they are generally well placed to do so.
With the average sixth form college having 1,700 students they have a curriculum mix which can adapt to new demands and absorb additional students relatively easily. That is not to say there won’t be issues.
The lagged funding system makes it expensive to absorb extra students in the first year (you only get paid a year later) and there are more complexities when students transfer half way through their courses, as rarely do subject syllabi and examination boards dovetail into the existing provision with no guarantee that topics have been taught in the same order.
Most sixth form colleges have also outgrown their premises and pressure on space may require a swift Portakabin solution followed by a prompt capital injection to increase accommodation.
However, in general terms there are rarely insurmountable problems if and when a school/academy looks to offload its sixth form, provided there is a good quality sixth form college or general FE/tertiary nearby.
All this begs two glaring questions. What is the ‘best’ size for the sixth form? It is difficult, on curriculum grounds, to argue for a number less than 400 which rules out all but a handful of existing academies/schools and makes the case strongly for more sixth form colleges.
Secondly, what is a ‘sufficient’ funding rate to deliver an effective sixth form experience? Clearly the current level isn’t working and relies on subsidies. Even sixth form colleges, with their economies of scale, are struggling and colleges with fewer than 1,000 students are under great pressure.
Wouldn’t it be a final irony if it took the demise of the small school sixth form to rescue sixth form colleges most at risk from current policies on funding and sixth form proliferation.
Implementation of the government’s study programmes among providers surveyed by Ofsted has been “too slow,” the education watchdog’s director for skills has said.
Ofsted director for FE and skills Lorna Fitzjohn (pictured) made the comments during her lecture today at Spotlight youth centre in Poplar, East London.
Ms Fitzjohn used the lecture to release Ofsted’s report on study programmes, which were launched by the government last year and require learners aged 16 to 19 to demonstrate progression to a higher level of attainment, take part in work experience and study maths and English to level two if they have not done so already.
She began her lecture on the subject of youth unemployment, claiming that 1,184,000 young people aged between 16 and 24 did not have a full time job and were not attending full-time education or training courses, and that 955,000 of these were considered not in education, employment or training (Neet).
Ms Fitzjohn said: “The 16 to 19 study programmes, introduced on August 1 last year, seemed to hold some of the answers. They were developed to provide a step-change in provision for all young people. All learners aged 16 to 19 should now be on individualised programmes which support their progression to their next planned step, be it further, higher education, training or employment.
“We used inspection findings and specific visits to explore how well providers were adapting their provision in line with the new requirements. The survey [on youth participation] explored how well local authorities, schools, FE and skills providers and the voluntary and community sector ensure effective participation of all 16 to 19-year-olds in education, employment or training, especially those who are disadvantaged.
“Both surveys identified a few providers with good practice, but much more needs to be done to ensure a secure future for all of those aged 16 and beyond.”
She added: “I fully acknowledge that the field work for our survey, undertaken in the first six months of the programme, only captured providers’ initial stages of implementing this new provision, however, even though providers had a full year to prepare, inspectors found little evidence that the transformational step-change intending in schools, academies and FE and skills providers sampled.
“Too many of these providers had not changed what they offered sufficiently. They were not yet offering programmes which met the pre-requirements of the study programmes. In particular we were concerned that too many learners were not progressing to a higher level of study to meet their educational potential or career aspiration, particularly on those level one and two programmes.
“Most of the providers didn’t use work experience effectively. Inspectors also found that the introduction of these programmes had disappointingly led to little change to level three programmes. Many school and academy leaders seemed to be unaware of the requirements, and the implications for sixth form provision. Implementation in these contexts was too slow.”
She also used the lecture to call for extra powers for councils, which currently have a duty to record data on the status of young people, but don’t have the legal power to demand the information from providers.
She said: “We need to know the world we are in better. Understanding fully the extent of youth unemployment is made difficult by the lack of definitive data on the number of young people who are in fact Neet.
“Quite simply, there are far too many people who are un-accounted for. The category used for these people is ‘current activity unknown’. They are often called the unknowns. If you don’t know who these young people are, how can you support them?”
James Kewin
Sixth Form Colleges’ Association deputy chief executive James Kewin said: “It is very early days in the life of study programmes, but this report provides some useful initial insights and recommendations that will aid their development.
“The study programme model, particularly the flexibility it provides, has been welcomed by sixth form colleges. However, the accompanying reduction in funding (more than 15 per cent for some institutions) has been less welcome – greater flexibility has come at a very high price for sixth form colleges. The government has got the model right but the funding wrong for 16 to 19 education.
“Sixth form colleges will build on the findings in this report. At the same time, Ofsted and the Department for Education [DfE] should ensure that their inspection and audit regimes do not penalise institutions that are adopting the flexible and innovative approaches to delivery that the report encourages. There must also be an acceptance that it is colleges and schools that are best placed to make decisions about the content of individual study programmes.”
Lynne Sedgmore, executive director of the 157 Group, said: “Coming, as this survey does, less than one year into the implementation of the most
Lynne Sedgmore
radical reform to 16 to 19 education for many years, it is perhaps unsurprising to see Ofsted’s comments about the pace of change.
“We know from other countries with high-performing education systems that major change takes time to embed and to produce results, and we know there is more to do here.
“What is clear from this report is that all those with a stake in the success of the study programmes policy must work together to ensure its success – colleges, schools, employers, local authorities and the government. It is reassuring that today’s report acknowledges this, with a comprehensive package of recommendations for all.”
A DfE spokesperson said: “The number of young people Neet is at its lowest level since consistent records began. And it is encouraging that this report by Ofsted shows our plan for post-16 education is already having a positive impact just two terms after coming into effect.
“The report shows positive early signs that schools and colleges are entering young people for more rigorous qualifications. In fact, the latest figures show that the numbers of those over the age of 17 taking GCSEs in English and maths are rising, giving thousands more the vital knowledge and skills demanded by employers.
“Following Professor Alison Wolf’s ground-breaking review of vocational education we have scrapped thousands of low-quality qualifications so that only the gold-standard, employer-valued courses remain. And providers are now incentivised to ensure young people study valuable courses after we changed post-16 funding from per-qualification to per-student.”
See edition 110 of FE Week, dated Monday, September 15, for more coverage.
Warwickshire College graduate Joe Dolman will rub shoulders with music stars Blondie and Paloma Faith when he performs at Radio 2’s sold-out Live in Hyde Park show on Sunday (September 14).
Joe, aged 18, who completed a level three extended diploma in music performance three months ago, is one of six acts chosen to appear on the BBC Introducing stage — which gives up-and-coming talent a chance.
The singer-songwriter has performed more than 200 gigs and has thousands of followers on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
Joe, who is now studying for a degree in songwriting at Brighton Institute of Modern Music, said: “I just feel very lucky and obviously I’m really looking forward to performing.”
Louise Clayton-Vance, music performance tutor at the college, said: “Joe is truly and undisputedly talented — a natural musician and songwriter — and when he performs, he commands the room and has such a professional persona.”
Havering College of Further and Higher Education graduate Aston Joshua has landed a dream role in a new dance adaption of Lord of the Flies at London’s Sadler’s Wells theatre next month, writes Paul Offord.
Securing his first big break in the world of contemporary ballet was no easy task for 21-year-old Aston Joshua.
The Havering College graduate was chosen ahead of more than 900 hopefuls who auditioned over the summer for the adaptation of William Golding’s classic book about a group of boys left to fend for themselves after their plane crash-lands on a desert island.
The number of performers was whittled down to 150, then 65 before Aston was chosen for the cast of 24 who will be dancing alongside professionals.
Aston, who completed a BTec level three extended diploma at the college in 2011 and higher national certificate (HNC) a year later, said: “The audition process was pretty tough.
“They put us through a lot of push ups, a lot of sit ups and a lot of intense workouts.
“The final audition was before a panel.
“When they rang me the same day to say I had got a part, I was shocked and didn’t have any words.
“I couldn’t really believe it. It is a dream come true and means a lot to me.
“It will be an honour to dance on stage at Sadler’s Wells.
“It is one of the most prestigious theatres in the land with so much history.”
He added rehearsals for the show, which was created by world-famous choreographer Matthew Bourne, had been hard work but he was “loving every minute of it”.
Aston, who progressed to a higher national diploma (HND) in dance at Havering College, which he completed June last year and is now trying to forge a professional career in dance, said: “Every day is something new and exciting.
“It’s a fantastic experience and I would like to thank my college tutors for helping me get here.
“My time at college was amazing. I learned a lot about many different styles of dance and about the history of dance.”
Elaine O’Connor, the college’s curriculum manager for dance, said: “The whole team are so proud of Aston. This is a fantastic achievement.
“Lord of the Flies will create links within the industry for him. This is well deserved because Aston just works so hard.
“I always saw great potential in him.”
Aston hopes Lord of the Flies will launch him on a successful career in dance.
He said: “I have always been a hard working person, determined to get what I want. If I am doing something, I make sure I do my best.”
Current HND dance students from the college Adam Sainsbury, aged 21, Daniel Lindsay and Carl Merritt, both 18, narrowly missed out on being chosen for the final cast, after making it through to the final 65 in the auditioning process.
Cap: Aston poses by a poster for Lord of the Flies
Doncaster College and University Centre has signed-up to a campaign to stop bullying towards lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) employees.
The ‘No Bystanders’ campaign by pressure group Stonewall encourages people to sign a pledge that they will take action if they see teasing or bullying taking place.
Diane Bailey, assistant principal for inclusion and learner experience, and Catherine Parkinson, deputy principal of strategy and resources, signed the pledge on behalf of the college. They also agreed to act as ‘straight allies’ — a term used by Stonewall to describe heterosexual people prepared to stand up for the interests of LGB colleagues — towards LGB colleagues.
Ms Bailey said: “Doncaster College is committed to creating a workplace where all staff can be their selves and a key aspect of this is our partnership with Stonewall.
“I hope that being a ‘straight ally’ will facilitate a more open and productive dialogue with LGB staff.”
Cap: Diane Bailey, assistant principal for inclusion and learner experience, and Catherine Parkinson, deputy principal of strategy and resources, holding a ‘No Bystanders’ banner
